FatCow VS HostGator – Which One Is More Cost-Effective

We have carried out a FatCow vs HostGator comparison as many of our readers feel hard to choose between the 2 companies. This is because both of them are experienced web hosts that have been in this industry for a long period of time. Therefore, they know how to deliver a quality hosting service that can meet the needs of customers successfully.

In order to help our readers make the right decision, we have made this comparison based on price, features, uptime, hosting speed, technical support, and industry reputation. All the statistics are coming from our real hosting experience and the performance testing in the real world.

Before comparing by ourselves, we have collected hundreds of reviews from the verified customers of the 2 companies all over the world. After analyzing these feedbacks carefully, HostGator has achieved a higher level of customer satisfaction rate than FatCow. In the following, we have made an overall rating chart based on customers’ voice.

Price

Price can be the top concern for the majority of webmasters, especially for budget-conscious students and business owners. In this case, we compare this aspect in the very beginning. In fact, both FatCow and HostGator have offered a budget-friendly price that can be afforded by almost all the webmasters easily.

Regularly, FatCow all-in-one web hosting plan asks for a starting price of $49/yr which averages $4.08/mo. This charge is only applied to the initial term for new customers, which means it is not valid for successive or renewal periods. The regular price starts from $9.49/mo.

HostGator has 3 hosting packages that are named as Hatchling, Baby, and Business. By activating the special coupon code EUNGE30OFF in the checkout, customers only need to pay $4.86/mo, $6.96/mo, and $10.46/mo respectively for the 3 plans, already 30% off the initial price.

HostGator Coupon Code Activation

In addition, both of them offer the money back guarantee to promise a risk-free and worry-free online dealing. The only difference is that the refund period of FatCow is 30 days while that of HostGator is 45 days. Please note that there is a non-refundable $15 domain fee if customers want their domains kept from FatCow.

Features

We have carefully reviewed the feature lists of the 2 companies in their official sites, and have found that their hosting packages are definitely rich-featured.

Customers can get an unlimited amount of disk space and monthly data transfer, a lot of free scripts, user-friendly website builder, free advertising credits, the latest version of PHP and MySQL, and the advanced technologies and CGI, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails, and many more.

But when analyzing some basic but important features, we find that the two hosts carry many essential differences as the following table presented. For example, HostGator provides customers with the popular cPanel control panel and SSH that are lacking in FatCow hosting account.

Hosting Performance

In order to compare their hosting performance, we not only review their web servers and data centers, but also carry out a performance monitoring to test their uptime and server response time.

HostGator announces 99.9% uptime guarantee, so does its competitor. Both companies are sparing no efforts to accomplish the tough task in order to give users a favorable Internet environment.

Investing heavily on the maintenance of the infrastructure and top technologies, HostGator fully proves its uptime competence in real practice. The results are worked out by our close observation to the sites in the past 6 months, and the following chart suggests the testing result of the latest 30 days.

By the same token, FatCow achieves 99.90% uptime in the past months. The success comes from the 24×7 constant server monitoring by technicians and redundant power supply.

In fact, both of them host all the websites with the quality web servers featuring a high specification. HostGator, in particular, makes use of the 100% DELL servers that are factory built and tested. Then, to guarantee that all the servers can run well and uninterruptedly all the times, these 2 companies locate these servers at world-class data centers that come with a lot of state-of-art technologies to ensure the unceasing power supply, proper cooling system, a high level of security, and 24/7 facility monitoring.

Both hosts have done a good job on uptime. However, a huge difference comes out in the performance part. Cooperating with multiple bandwidth providers and CloudFlare HostGator serves people excellent Internet reliability. With the utilization of Dell Servers, the company ensures an average of 338ms server response time.

The server response time of the latter we have observed is over 100% slower than that of the former. Mainly the unsatisfying figure results in a weaker server configuration. Have a look at the following comparison chart.

Technical Support

At present, more and more people are caring about customer service, so both HostGator and FatCow focus on offering a responsive technical support. People are allowed to contact the two hosts by using online chat, sending email and making a toll-free phone call. There are professional groups willing to give a hand to troubled people in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and 365 days a year.

We have to mention a frustrating experience of using live chat to contact FatCow staff that the waiting time of 2-3 minutes is much longer than what they promised. As live chat should have been the most efficient way of getting answers, we think the company requires a little improvement.

Summary

According to this comparison, both of the 2 web hosts have offered a top-notch hosting service with cheap price, rich features, no downtime, and good technical support. However, for people who are wishing for a fast hosting speed with the cPanel control panel, HostGator is the better option.

I've been an experienced web developer, SEOer and technical writer since 2003. I worked in many international high-tech companies including Microsoft and Autodesk before 2012. Now I own a startup company in San Francisco, CA, focusing on developing websites and blogs to deliver exceptional results to global readers by leveraging the power of Internet.
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FTC Disclosure

We get commission from web hosting companies for referral and advertisement. However, this does not affect our unbiased web hosting reviews and insights. We never allow payments to influence our judgement. We always work hard and try our best to help people find the best cost effective web hosting deals at an affordable rate.